familypediawikiaorg-20200214-history
Forum:Penance
I erred and deleted a category someone wanted to keep. As penance for this mistake, I corrected a few double-redirects; but I was told that some double redirects are there for a reason (can someone explain why when they have a spare moment.) At any rate, is there a task-list of mind-numbingly boring things that you administration types can give those of us who would like to atone for our mistakes (and for me who would like to atone for the mistakes of my atonement)? Zephyrinus 21:23, 6 April 2007 (UTC) :Certainly. Didn't mean to squash good intents, and I should have explained this previously. This is more an issue with redirects, but it also fits with double redirects to some extent (I didn't realize the ones you were looking at were double's---a legitimate double is probably going to be really rare). The problem comes because some redirects are inserted intentionally. Usually this is done when someone KNOWS that a mistake is going to occur, and sometime, someone, is going to call up an article with a particular, but bad, name. :This occurs because sometimes people have different opinions on a) the spelling of the name, b) the DOB, and c) the DOD. Often a redirect occurs because someone develops a better understanding of when the person died---sometimes that happens more than once, and a double redirect results. Nonetheless, those "incorrect dates" in article titles are useful because they will steer someone looking for a particular person to the current article. Hopefully we won't be getting into name wars, or redirect wars, but there the "objectivity" credo underlying the Wikia should stand us in good stead. :Another reason for deliberate redirects is that sometimes there are legitimate alternative names for articles. Sometimes its just easier to sprinkle in a few redirects just so when someone makes a typo you still get to the right place. You see that a lot on WIkipedia, where there are redirects for common spelling mistakes. A specific example here would be Rutherford, 1986, WKR, 1986 and WKR, both of which take you to the same article. The second and third form is in there simply because people working this line habitually refer to this work by the authors initials. Knowing that, it just seemed a good idea to simplify things, and allow the short forms of the title take you to the main article. I could probably spell that one out also, and make a redirect for the man's full name vis WIlliam Kenneth Rutherford, 1986 but that's not commonly used in shorthand notation. Most people just say "WKR" and let it go. :This elimination of redirects is fairly subtle business, and hard to due without running a risk of killing something needful. I can do my own (your right, its mind numbingly boring) but that's only because I have the best shot of knowing what's really worthless. I tried working some of the redirects that were left over from eons past, but soon found that like as not I was killing something useful---so quickly stopped messing with this unless I found something really obvious and needful. :In all fairness, I'll have to tell you that until now we simply have not had to deal with "lots of help". It was a struggle just getting folks to use the site---helping with the administrivia was the last thing we were looking for---well, the last thing I was looking for---Robin was finding it a full time task just fixing my typos. That seems to be changing now (not my typos, they;re as bad as ever), and all of the hard work you are putting in in adding cemeteries is an important part of that. But that means we (or at least I) have to start thinking in terms of how best to make use of those with instincts such as yours, where there's a desire to contribute more than just articles. (To tell the truth, I'm overjoyed with every knew article). :Places to help? Probably the best of the administrivia would be to work the special page for uncategorized articles. As Robin will tell you, I'm particularly bad about slipping in categories. :Also, if you're looking for something that has a bit more pizzaz----adding a "hit counter" from Google would be something that would really help this site. We really have a need to know how much the site is being accessed. We can tell that in a general way from changes in the number of users, and changes in the numbers of edits, but what's really needed is something that tells us how often the site is being accessed. :I'm sure Robin can add lots of other things, but the above will do for the moment. Bill 22:41, 6 April 2007 (UTC) ::Wikia already uses Google Analytics, and they're trying to figure out a way to show the site statistics that they get from it. Chadlupkes 05:43, 7 April 2007 (UTC) :::When I asked about this problem on the Live help desk, their recommendation was to add something independently. On the othrhand, if someone is working a global solution, perhaps being patient will be the best course. Bill 13:19, 7 April 2007 (UTC) ::::* http://www.commerce55.com/demo-v14-hagnover_info.jpg visitors through ::::I have no idea how to reset it. ::::This has taken me ALL day. Consider this a couple Indulgences for future mistakes. ::::Have fun! Zephyrinus 02:03, 8 April 2007 (UTC) :::::Well now!. This is great. And I noticed you were working on this through the course of the day. I'm a little fuzzy about exactly what its counting. Is it "total distinct users" from the beginning of the site? The total accesses since you turned it on? Are we really getting 600+ hits per day? I'll have to check out the source for your tool and see what this is really doing, but if its really counting the number of individual accesses to this site per day, then we're doing a lot better than I'd hoped. Bill 02:29, 8 April 2007 (UTC) :::::OK, checked it out with a few experiments. What is being counted are the total number of page accesses. Everytime someone accesses one of our pages, the counter goes up by one. That could be a "read" or it could be an "edit". It could also be a simple "refresh page". This will be useful information. We'll have to start a log somewhere, keeping track of this through time. Bill 02:43, 8 April 2007 (UTC) OK, great, let's copy that to a more meaningfully-named page such as Forum:Page access counting. Robin Patterson 04:22, 8 April 2007 (UTC)